Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat [Paperback]

Morris Dees (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 1997

For nearly 18 years, Morris Dees, chief trial lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center and its Militia Task Force, has been gathering information and intelligence on the operations of organized groups of racists and far-right extremists through an operation called the Klawatch Project. Information has been gathered from public sources, recorded speeches, publications of the groups, law enforcement sources, court depositions, Internet postings and undercover operations. Their database now contains 75,000 entries. Prosecutors across America have used the information to successfully convict more than 20 white supremacists of hate crimes. This book aims to show what really goes on behind the friendly face of the militia leader and how these "super-patriots" see themeselves in a life-and-death struggle to reclaim the country.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In October 1994, six months before the bombing of an Oklahoma City federal office building killed 169 people, lawyer Morris Dees wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno, alerting her to the danger posed by right-wing militia groups, whose ranks were swelling with fanatical racists, neo-Nazis and other extremists. Dees had been monitoring violence-prone organizations for 14 years as investigator and chief trial counsel for the Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center based in Alabama. Written with reporter James Corcoran (whose Bitter Harvest tracked white supremacist meddling in the early 1980s farm crisis), this chilling expose gets deep inside the paranoid mentality of antigovernment hate groups, documenting the growing links among paramilitary units, white supremacists and neo-Nazis who preach armed confrontation. Dees traces Oklahoma bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh's ties to the militia and super-patriot underground, and he delineates striking parallels between the actual bombing and the fictional bombing done by McVeigh's hero in neo-Nazi William Pierce's 1978 novel, The Turner Diaries.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Every few years, Dees sums up the doings of white supremacists whom his Southern Poverty Law Center monitors and sometimes sues for civil rights infringements. This summation mainly concerns publicity-soaked cases like Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. Dees also wades through the beliefs of several militantly lunatic groups, such as the Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG) signifies the federal government or that the underground book The Turner Diaries re-creates their ideal future--an America purged pure after a racial civil war. Very extreme, but some people, like the accused perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing, read and believe. Coinciding with the anniversary of that heinous act, Dees' review can, where interest warrants, supplement recent publications, like A Force upon the Plains by Kenneth Stern , a more fact-dense investigation of superpatriotism. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060927895
• ISBN-13: 978-0060927899
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,802,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Millionaire Dees Writes Another Fundraising Screed, September 25, 2003

By 

jawbone "jb33779" (Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat (Paperback)

I revisited this book after noting Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center's continuing miserably low rating with charity watchdog The American Institute of Philanthropy. Fifteen years ago, Dees promised to stop fundarising at $55 million, only to raise that to $100 million two years later. Now he has $120 million and spends $6 million per year on fundraising and only half that much on helping victims of civil rights violations. I can't find a single figure, let alone a detailed financial report, on the SPLC web site. But he did build himself a massive stainless steel office building in Montgomery.
Race-baiting and scare-mongering pays very well, at least for Moe.

20 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is more of a diatribe than a book, February 2, 2004

By 

Joseph J. Slevin (Carlsbad, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat (Paperback)

Dees has a desire to emasculate those who have reacted to what they see as unfair. We have a very sad state of affairs where people lose what they have and no one fights for their rights and assists them to keep what they have.

Can Dees look at those with a sincere need to recoup losses and regain a sense of dignity? As we lose more individually owned farms and ranches to the big corporate comglomerate who buys at a discount from themselves, further dissenfranchising the farmer, what do we do. If you want to understand the struggle of those in rural America read Harvest of Rage.

19 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Innacurate, sensationalistic dreck, September 5, 2003

By 

Jim Whitaker (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat (Paperback)

Dees, in his tabloid-style account of the militia movement, omits facts, and connects militias to racist groups, a gross and innacurate generalization if ever there was one. Horribly biased throughout, this irresponsible book gets even worse in its last chapter, in which Dees rationalizes limiting the liberties of good, honest Americans for the security of paranoid winged monkeys of the New World Order such as himself.